An Analytical and Comparative Study of Male and Female Images in Qajar Dynasty Paintings During the Reign of Fath-Ali Shah (1797–1834)
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Middle Eastern Studies ISSN: 0026-3206 (Print) 1743-7881 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fmes20 An analytical and comparative study of male and female images in Qajar dynasty paintings during the reign of Fath-Ali Shah (1797–1834) Zahra Fanaei, Bahar Rahimzadeh & S. Ali Mojabi To cite this article: Zahra Fanaei, Bahar Rahimzadeh & S. Ali Mojabi (2017) An analytical and comparative study of male and female images in Qajar dynasty paintings during the reign of Fath-Ali Shah (1797–1834), Middle Eastern Studies, 53:3, 420-441, DOI: 10.1080/00263206.2016.1261829 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2016.1261829 Published online: 09 Dec 2016. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 12 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fmes20 Download by: [188.159.131.171] Date: 20 January 2017, At: 08:17 MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, 2017 VOL. 53, NO. 3, 420–441 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2016.1261829 An analytical and comparative study of male and female images in Qajar dynasty paintings during the reign of Fath-Ali Shah (1797–1834) Zahra Fanaei , Bahar Rahimzadeh and S. Ali Mojabi Department of Textile and Apparel Design, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Iran Most researchers and scholars inside Iran consider Qajar dynasty art (1789–1925) in line with the Safavid (1501–1736) and Zand (1750–1794) dynasties. Assuming the Safavid period as the starting point in the Farangi Sazi tradition (a term used for some art schools in Iran which are influenced by European art), and assuming the art in the Afsharid (1736– 1796) and Zand dynasties as more impressionable disciples of the tradition, then it can be asserted that Qajar dynasty art pursued the same tradition with minor changes and varia- tions through the offspring and grandchildren of those same artists. Qajar painting repre- sented an effort to forge a delightful balance between the two non-similar Iranian and European elements which received some favourable but minor success in the first half of the twentieth century.1 The royal style of figurative painting created in Fath-Ali Shah’s era (1797–1834), when Qajar dynasty painting began, is a manifestation of the apogee of intermingling Persian and European art in a refined and splendid framework. In another words, it was a school in which there is a brilliant collaboration of naturalism, abstraction and ornamentation and a school in which the tendency to highlight the portrait removes the realism in Euro- pean perspective and modelling.2 In Naser al-Din Shah’s reign (1848–1896), his keen inter- est in photography is manifest in its evident influence on Qajar paintings. Portrait painting began to be so dependent on photography that the length of time the model sat before the painter decreased. Paintings of this era had an extreme similarity with sin- gle portrait photography. As photography was promoted, creating perspective, simula- tion, chiaroscuro and the application of the law of proportions, these same aspects developed and were promoted in painting.3 A significant part of this study stresses the comparison between men and women in the paintings from the Fath-Ali Shah Qajar period as well as similarities and differences among them. Thus, with the employment of a descriptive method this research aims to identify characteristics of men’s and women’s images in the content of the paintings in order to understand the Qajar school better. Comparative analysis will be used to examine the role of females and males as well as their place in the court of Fath-Ali Shah. The article focuses on explaining the picture’s elements, the features of single portraits, types of com- position, the presence of females in the court, characteristics of females and males in the paintings and comparison of their pictures. Appreciation theory by Harry Broudy is applied CONTACT Bahar Rahimzadeh [email protected] © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 421 to describe and interpret the pictures. Broudy suggests that art education needs a method of perceiving and analysing.4 Therefore, based on the theory, appreciation of artworks consists of both aesthetic perception and aesthetic criticism. Aesthetic perception is divided into four sections: sensory properties, formal properties, technical properties and expressive properties. Based on the objectives, we use sensory, formal and expressive properties for analysing artworks. This paper will address two main questions: first, what are the similarities and differences between female and male figures in the paintings of the Fath-Ali Shah’s period? And, second, what is the concept of male and female figures in the paintings of this period. Meanwhile, readers may gain a better understanding of the aesthetic properties of the paintings in this specific period (Qajar painting school), and also of its style and content. Principles of Qajar paintings The principal subject in the royal style of figurative painting that became dominant in Fath-Ali Shah’s era was the human, and the painter presented it in a world which was an indicator of glamour, beauty, love, joy and even occasionally legends, and thus nature ele- ments were of secondary importance. Moreover, the painter would have attempted to execute an art form as commanded by various individuals who probably had different tastes. Consequently, there is a great deal of subjectivity and variety in art pieces of the Qajar school. With their extravagantly western perspective, the paintings of the Qajar period seem strange and to some extent ridiculous. The shade work together with the attempt to take advantage of perspectives at the same time in a space which is merely two-dimensional is thoughtful. To the artists creating these art forms, this method of expression indicates their initiative which was also pleasing to their patrons.5 In general, although there is a dearth of high quality art works in the paintings of this era, the attempt to implement Western elements such as perspective and shade work in addition to merging it into Per- sian art was a significant revolution undertaken by the artists of the time. The science of perspective has a Renaissance, especially Italian, background; the motifs on cloth and paintings are among examples from eighteenth-century France. The implementation method of assimilation with natural textures is abundant in these art works where the art- ist attempted to copy exactly from nature and to reflect it in the paintings and this style of portrait painting was at its height at this period.6 Colour combinations are among the other notable points of the era. In paintings of this era, colour is more emphasized than form, and colour is the factor that attracts the view- er’s attention. The main and dominant colour used is red, then golden yellow, orange and black respectively which were used for men and women proportionately. Though the range of colours was limited in this era, the painter sets red, orange and dark orange col- ours beside green, or accompanies yellow, white and blue planes with arabesque motifs and tiny flowers and achieves an unprecedented balance between plane and motif. In some cases, these colours are implemented on a dark background to add to the art work’s transparency; it facilitates coloration, the shades are not faded into one another and for the first time, colouring is introduced to painting through chiaroscuro (Figure 1). The works of Qajar painters were used to ornament and embellish court life. In this era, ornamental art was greatly enforced. Costumes, crowns and cloaks are all designed with 422 Z. FANAEI ET AL. Figure 1. Fath-Ali Shah portrait, oil on canvas, private collection, 1799 (extracted from Iranian Paintings by Rouin Pakbaz, 2006). pearl, ornamented in handmade cloth with golden threads, and embellished with pieces of jewellery. The eighteenth century ornamental motifs consist of Eslimi and Khataie (ara- besque and traditional designs and changing into bunches of special spices of fragrant rose flowers), medallions of Term (a traditional handmade piece of priceless cloth threaded with silk) and repeated miniature flowers on the margins,7 corners and the cen- tral circle. The representation of the substantial appearance of the outside world and the harmonic repetition of motifs and colours is introduced in the paintings attributed to this era. All in all, the utopia of the painters of this era had been to show a perfectionist beauty. Single portrait painting in Fath-Ali Shah’s reign While manifesting visual specifications of their own kind, mentioned above, the portrait paintings of the Qajar period also have a significant conceptual load. Though among the regimes after Islam (Table 1), Qajar kings had not been the only rulers who had taken advantage of visual arts for propaganda; their emphasis on single portrait painting espe- cially in Fath-Ali Shah’s period, which had been the starting point and pinnacle of this art, differentiates the Qajar dynasty and his reign from others. Indeed, this interest of Qajar MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 423 Table 1. Periods of Iranian history by dynasty (before and after Islam). Dynasties Time Ages 1. Achaemenid Empire 550–350 BC 200 2. Seleucid Empire 312–63 BC 249 3. Parthian Empire 247 BC–224 AD 471 4. Sassanid Empire 224–651 AD 427 5. Omavi Caliphates 661–750 AD 89 6. Abassi Caliphates 750–1258 AD 508 7. Sammanid dynasty 875–999 AD 124 8. Qhaznavid dynasty 963–1186 AD 223 9. Seljuk Empire 1037–1194 AD 157 10. Kharazm Empire 1077–1231 AD 154 11. Mongol il-khanates 1256–1335 AD 79 12.